On December 8, the Solemn Feast of the Immaculate Conception, the British medical journal, The Lancet, published a most puzzling commentary, in which a clarion call is issued for the Catholic Church to provide all nuns with oral contraceptives in order to prevent cancer. Australian researchers Kara Britt and Roger Short make their recommendation based on the increased risk of ovarian, endometrial and breast cancer associated with nulliparity, the condition of having never been pregnant:
Today, the world’s 94,790 nuns still pay a terrible price for their chastity because they have a greatly increased risk of breast, ovarian, and uterine cancers: the hazards of their nulliparity.
While nuns almost always carry this risk factor, many lay women are also nulliparous. Why are the authors limiting their recommendation to women religious? It seems that these researchers are trying to cast the Church hierarchy in a negative light by claiming they are not addressing a significant health issue of their women religious:
If the Catholic Church could make the oral contraceptive pill freely available to all its nuns, it would reduce the risk of those accursed pests, cancer of the ovary and uterus, and give nuns’ plight the recognition it deserves.
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